


the line blurring you and i

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Author Projecting onto Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder Symptoms, Mental Health Issues, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, OSDD-1b Symptoms, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, and delores is his protector, bc i'm undiagnosed with anything and don't want to falsely describe an existing disorder, depersonalisation, five has some kind of dissociative disorder (probably OSDD), hence tagging 'DID Symptoms' rather than flat-out 'DID', no medical/scientific terms are used
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:41:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23793289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: He thinks, “I could learn to time travel.”They think, “You probably shouldn’t.”He doesn’t know who they are. He doesn’t listen.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70
Collections: Anonymous





	the line blurring you and i

**Author's Note:**

> this is a ventfic. i left the tags specifically vague (tagging symptoms rather than the disorders themselves) because i'm undiagnosed and writing from my own experiences.  
> this is posted anonymously because i am currently uncomfortable with being open about this, yet wanted to write something anyway.  
> more chapters might come, idk!  
> please be respectful in the comments.

There’s something different about Number Five. There’s something different about all of them, really, but something in his heart feels dislodged and out-of-place when stacked up against the others, something off and something foreign. He thinks, when he’s young, that it must simply be his power - but as he grows, his true power develops, and he’s left grasping at the fragile belief that maybe he has two, unwilling to admit that maybe he just isn’t quite like the others.

What right does he have to be different? What right does he have to feel fragile in these ways? He watches Four creep to his room from the mausoleum one night, eyes dark and distant; he watches Seven stare at the invisible wall separating her from her siblings, a heavy loneliness in her face; he watches Two gasp for air when he finally reaches the surface, and One shake and crumble, and Six shake after every mission, and Three rub her raw throat, and wonders what on earth must be wrong with him if he can’t take anything lesser.

* * *

Five has never been forgetful. This is important only because he suddenly finds himself forgetting, stumbling over words he’d heard mere moments beforehand, flushing an uncharacteristic mix of red and shock-white under his father’s scornful gaze and the shocked stares of his siblings.

He doesn’t apologise. He uses what few speckles of the conversation he remembers to twist it in another direction, puffing out his chest and raising his chin, desperately clinging to his usual air of confidence and arrogance - and his father nods, his siblings exhale and relax. The problem has been diverted, and so have the eyes.

(He wonders, distantly, why it feels as though his memory has been drowned, why a conversation mere minutes before feels as if he’s recalling a long-forgotten dream or what he did at 3pm four Tuesdays ago. He wonders, distantly, why this couldn’t have just been a power after all.)

* * *

One becomes Luther. Four becomes Klaus. Seven, hesitant as she is, becomes Vanya.

The other siblings cling to their names like lifelines. Five furrows his brow and says he’d rather not have one at all.

This decision is one thing that he refuses to credit to his tangled brain. He is Five, not whatever is curling inside his brain, blurring his memories and dictating his thoughts.

* * *

He thinks, “I could learn to time travel.”

They think, “You probably shouldn’t.”

He doesn’t know who they are. He doesn’t listen.

* * *

The morning before the worst mistake of his life, he realises that he can’t remember several years of his life.

He ignores the thud of panic in his chest and decides it doesn’t matter. He can always travel back and experience it all again, right?

(He never does.)

* * *

The world crumbles before him.

His efforts to jump away fail, leaving him kneeling in the dirt and decay of the street - and yet he feels as if he’d succeeded, floating just outside of his body, drifting out of the smoke and fire.

He’s still not home when he comes back, but the sky is darker and his throat feels sore from the smoke.

* * *

He wakes up three nights later lay on a pile of slightly-charred books in a library that hadn’t yet burnt to a crisp, his arms coiled protectively around the upper half of a mannequin, the only remotely humanoid thing he could find that hadn’t been so destroyed that it unnerved him.

He’s only had his eyes open for a minute before her thoughts ring in the back of his head.

“Please don’t be afraid,” she says, “my name is Delores. I’m here to help you.”


End file.
